Monday, November 26, 2012

NLSI Director's Seminar Series, Live Online Nov. 27

Jack Burns
University of Colorado at Boulder

Tuesday, November 27, 2012
1800 UTC - 10AM PST, 1PM EST

The NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) Lunar University Network for Astrophysics Research (LUNAR) is a team of researchers and students at leading universities, NASA centers, and federal research laboratories undertaking investigations aimed at using the Moon as a platform for space science.

LUNAR research includes Lunar Interior Physics & Gravitation using Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR), Low Frequency Cosmology and Astrophysics (LFCA), Planetary Science and the Lunar Ionosphere, Radio Heliophysics and Space Radiation, and Exploration Science. The LUNAR team is exploring technologies that are likely to have a dual purpose, serving both exploration and science.

Larger laser range reflector deployed at HadleyRille Delta by Scott and Irwin of Apollo 15 inFebruary 1971, a still active component of thatmissions ALSEP and today an effort to constrainthe measured distance to the Moon to determinelocality, if any, of cosmological physics.

In this talk Dr. Burns will describe how LUNAR researchers are using LLR to provide the most precise constraints on General Relativity and gravitation, how low frequency radio observations of the Sun will assist us in understanding and predicting solar radiation that propagates throughout interplanetary space, and how low radio frequency telescopes in lunar orbit and on the lunar farside will allow us to probe the first stars and galaxies during the early Universe’s Cosmic Dawn.

Dr. Burns will also describe our development of new human/robotic mission concepts, including a mission to the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point, where astronauts in the Orion spacecraft will teleoperate rovers for geological exploration and for deployment of a low radio frequency array.

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Burns is a professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and Vice President Emeritus for Academic Affairs and Research for the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is also Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute’s Lunar University Network for Astrophysics Research (LUNAR), a NASA-funded center and part of the NASA Lunar Science Institute. Burns received his B.S. degree, magna cum laude, in Astrophysics from the University of Massachusetts, and received his doctorate in Astronomy from Indiana University.

From 2001 - 2005, Burns served as Vice President for Academic Affairs & Research for the University of Colorado System. Burns was Vice Provost for Research at the University of Missouri – Columbia from 1997 through 2001. He was Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at New Mexico State University (NMSU) and served as Department Head and Professor in the Department of Astronomy at NMSU from 1989 until 1996.

Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE), utilizing the radio-quiet of the lunar farside to explore the earliest period on the cosmic time line, 200 million years between the primordial Big Bang and the emergence of the earliest luminous sources and the structure of the present universe. "The lunar Farside is potentially the only site in the inner solar system for high precision radio cosmology.” Illustration accompanying post "Farside offers radio quiet to probe Cosmic Dark Age," July 2, 2012 [NLSI].

During his tenure at the University of New Mexico from 1980 to 1989, Burns served as the Director of the Institute for Astrophysics, and he was a Presidential Fellow. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory from 1978 to 1980.

Burns has over 380 publications in refereed journals, books, and in conference proceedings and abstracts (listed in NASA’s Astrophysics Data System). He is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received NASA’s Exceptional Public Service Medal in 2010 for his service on the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and as Chair of the NAC Science Committee.